Apte mixed 2 ounces of The Feathery blended Scotch, 1 ounce of Dolin sweet vermouth and, unexpectedly, three dashes of apple bitters.
There was a tie for second place, shared by Anu Apte, owner of the Rob Roy bar in Seattle, and Andy Bixby of the whiskey-focused Jack Rose Dining Saloon in Washington, D.C. “I would pick that out blindfolded as a Rob Roy,” declared Simó. It was on the light side, but had good body and a touch of smoke. The drink found wide favor upon first sip. (He cast no vote in the blind tasting.) A clear favorite, as well as a true exemplar of the modern Rob Roy style, his was composed of 2 ounces of Highland Park 12-year, 1 ounce of Carpano Antica vermouth, two dashes of Angostura bitters and a cherry garnish. The winning drink came from the man mixing the cocktails himself, Tom Macy. All were served up except one, which came in a rocks glass over one large cube, inciting brief confusion at the tasting table. The most common garnishes were a cherry or orange twist. And bitters ranged from Angostura to orange, cherry, apple and Peychaud’s. Vermouth selections, too, were all over the map. Moreover, single malts outnumbered blended Scotches and one drink didn’t have Scotch at all, but a Japanese whisky. That open-mindedness served the judges well-of 10 competing drinks, only two shared a choice of Scotch. (It was later revealed that the drink was made with Talisker 10-year, a notably peated bottling.) As products of the modern drinking era, the panelists were not opposed to using a single malt in the mix. “This is a Rob Roy you would get in a cocktail bar 10 years ago,” said McGee, sampling a particularly smoky, intense specimen. The panel spotted a few such examples among the competitors.
#Perfect rob roy drink recipe upgrade
Around the mid-aughts, however, young bartenders, looking to give the drink an upgrade (and not particularly concerned with their boss’ bottom line) began pouring pricier Scotches-including single malts-into the mix, leading to a bolder, brasher cocktail. The drink remained a pretty predictable character for the next 100 years. Wherever it came from, it was drunk far and wide by the turn of the 20th century. Persistent stories connect it to two major Manhattan hotels in the final years of the 1800s-the Fifth Avenue Hotel and the Waldorf-Astoria-though some recent scholarship points to a bar and bartender in Hoboken, New Jersey. Its origin city and author, as with so many cocktails, remain in question. The Rob Roy-which takes its name from Rob Roy, a popular operetta of 1894 about the Scottish folk hero of that name-has enjoyed nearly a century and a quarter of name-brand recognition. “I think it’s a more balanced, lighter cocktail now,” he said. While all agreed that the drink still retained a distinctly Don Draper aura-1950s tailoring, hotel-bar ordering-McGee thought the cocktail revival of the past 15 years had ushered in an era of greater subtlety, one that would favor a more delicate expression of the drink. “Is this drink going to be a lighter Scotch Manhattan or more of a vehicle for Scotch ?” Macy thought the latter route was preferable. But Tom Macy, the co-owner of Clover Club, who prepared the competing cocktails that day, offered what he thought was the central question where modern Rob Roys are concerned. Given the above, one had to wonder what the panel was left to discuss, and what, exactly, they were looking for in a Rob Roy. And Joaquín Simó, of Pouring Ribbons in Manhattan, thought a perfect Rob Roy (with the vermouth portion split between sweet and dry) a better expression of the drink. PUNCH senior editor Chloe Frechette found the Manhattan more “crave-able.” Paul McGee, co-owner of Lost Lake in Chicago, preferred a Bobby Burns. Even the judging panel recently assembled by PUNCH to sample through a blind tasting of 10 Rob Roys, drawn from bartenders around the United States, admitted that they preferred other similar drinks to the cocktail in question. It will always be a “Manhattan with Scotch,” a perennial runner-up in the mixed-drink pecking order. The Rob Roy’s peaceful existence may, instead, owe to its general failure to ascend to the top tier of classics.
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